We begin this Skagit Valley tulip tour from Seattle, and travel to La Conner, where we meet the boat and set out for a two and a half hour boat cruise on Puget Sound. Lunch of cracked crab is included and you also get chicken, and other items.

Upon your return to the dock, you’ll continue to the two famous tulip farms, Roozengaarde and Tulip Town. You may know, Skagit Valley is the largest tulip producer in the entire United States.

Oh and I must mention, you get to skip the lines to get tickets, and you get dropped off at the gate! Now more parking and walking and waiting. Boom, you’re in!

Rather than do the usual 2 farms and lunch in a nearby town, try something new this year! We’d love to experience this and get local, fresh crab as our lunch.

See some beautiful islands, feast on crab, then feast your eyes on the flowers!

Departing at 8:00am from Northgate, 8:30am from Seattle Sheraton, and 9:10am from the Star Lake Park and Ride (I-5 @ S 272nd St), this tour is a full day of fun and festivities.

Our tour, Christmas Leavenworth Lighting, includes a deluxe motor coach with a tour director to share the what-to-do information before arrival in Leavenworth. On the way over, enjoy holiday music, Christmas trivia, sing-along (3-4 songs) a free raffle drawing, and breakfast items to munch on.

You’ll have 5 hours in Leavenworth to shop, play, and eat, with Holiday cheer and festivities all around you. Maybe even sledding for the kids if weather permits! Bring your sled if you have one, or buy one there and bring home with you. At 4:30 the final parade begins, with the whole town ablaze by 5:00 in brilliant lights and colors throughout the village.

The trip home is relaxing after all the excitement, with a holiday movie for your enjoyment and an evening snack as we bring you safely back to your starting location.

Visit our website to reserve your seat! Seating limited, so don’t hesitate! www.cherylsnwtours.com/ and scroll down to the Christmas Leavenworth Lighting tour. For a 10% discount, contact kamron@cherylsnwtours.com and mention you read the blog!

We offer private and group tours all year, so check our website for fun tours anytime! http://www.cherylsnorthwesttours.com.

YES! Free oysters on our Oysterfest Tour. The venue is held every year, and this year Cheryl’s Northwest Tours LLC is taking a trip there. So join in, no driving needed!

We hired a coach to take you to Shelton for this fun annual event. From Seattle we have three pickup locations: a spot in Seattle, one on I-5 at Kent, and another in Lakewood.

The shucking contest is how you get the free oysters. You can roam around the grounds and visit the event booths, the barn and the history museum, all on the premises, while the contests are on break. Then, when they compete, you win with free oysters! It’s quite an event to visit the WEST COAST OYSTER SHUCKING CHAMPIONSHIP.

Thank you Taylor shellfish for donating thousands of fresh oysters for this event.

To sign up, go to http://www.cherylsnorthwesttours.com and select the box (or tab) for Seasonal Tours. Scroll down to the Oysterfest, then BOOK NOW. A confirmation will follow. Be sure to tell us which location you want picked up at.

Our Private Mount Rainier Tour from Seattle covers all you can ask for and more for a mountain tour! You get to see all sides of Mount Rainier as you travel all the way around it, we don’t go up and back the same way.

Trail hikes, waterfall trails, a canyon, and fast-flowing rivers will get your spirit active. We provide a map and trail suggestions, and the Visitors Center can provide even more trail ideas, maps, gift shop, mountain animals to look for, geology, and more to help coordinate your time at Paradise. Box canyon, near remnants of lava, are showcased along-side the trail, easy to see, get to, and enjoy. Even a view of Mount Adams can be seen on a clear day. Some waterfalls are right by the parking area, so no walking at all.

We offer tours for both hikers and non athletic visitors on our Private Mount Rainier tour; anyone who wishes to see the beauty and grandeur of our Cascade Mountains. We modify the tour as we go along just to keep you having fun, and often make wow! stops for photos.

We also make several brief stops on our Private Mount Rainier tour to see unusual and interesting sights along the way (you’ll love it!) and to stretch our legs during the drive to and from the actual mountain roads. You ask, we stop.

Lunch is included at a restaurant along the way, unless you want more time on the trails. In that case you’ll eat at the Visitors Center or we’ll pick up sandwiches and chips to eat on the way.

Can’t wait to meet you! Call Cheryl’s Northwest Tours LLC at 206 353-3330 or book on line at cherylsnwtours.com. We have limited availability due to these being private tours, but we’ll watch for you!

Recently we took a trip across the mountain passes to see waterfalls in the Northwest and the autumn colors. We were delighted with the sights! November 2015 in the Northwest had considerable rain, and there were waterfalls all up and down the mountain passes, along the main highways!

waterfall Mt. Rainier

Waterfall Stehekin

We don’t usually travel in November, as it’s getting darker and colder, and everyone tends to start the indoors program, but I must say, November is the time to go seek waterfalls. The abundance of rain made every waterfall spectacular. Tiny streams were floods of water, white bubbling amazement. Deception Falls and Bridal Veil Falls were beyond exclamation! I’m telling you, it was overwhelming, the amounts of water roaring down the streams. We were unable to capture many of these falls due to the weather and driving conditions. Here are some waterfall photos taken earlier this year.

We invite everyone from everywhere to join us on a tour. We offer private tours to many Northwest Regions; day excursions of varying length, road trips across Washington, and overnight trips cover multi states in the Northwest. We cover history, heritage, and geology in a fun, simple way. Join us sometime, we’d love to meet you! www.cherylsnwtours.com.

Not just a ride there and back, you’ll enjoy holiday music on the bus, local information on the route there, Leavenworth history, and get inside information on what to do, where to go, suggestions for restaurants, maps, restroom locations, crowd secrets, and more. We provide snacks on the way there and back, bottled water, and you’ll watch a holiday movie on the way back.

Bring your sleds if so inclined to slide down the snow-covered grass in the park! Enjoy hot cider or hot spiced wine in the cider tent, shop, explore the Wenatchee River walk, and eat, drink, and be merry!

Over 5 hours in Leavenworth, the lights at 4:45-5:00 will amaze you, especially if this is your first experience to the Festival. For those who go every year, our premium Christmas Leavenworth Lighting tour to get you there and back makes all the difference.

Get your tickets early before the tour sells out. Book on-line on our website homepage: www.cherylsnorthwesttours.com.

Lavender is abundant in the Pacific Northwest. We have such great soil perfect for Lavender. There are Lavender farms in the San Juan Islands, WA and several in Sequim, WA, Salem OR, Hood River Oregon, and throughout the NW region. An interestingly varied flower from plant to plant, each smells a little different and burst into color in July, typically.

Our tour takes you to Sequim for the Lavender Festival, Sunday July 19, 2015. You’ll visit at least 3 different farms and Lavender in the Park on this full day excursion. An added bonus, you get to ride on a ferry boat to get there!

As is normal with all Cheryl’s Northwest Tours LLC tours, we share local history, geology, and heritage along the way to get a real feel for the Pacific Northwest. Not too much, just enough to learn and have fun.

We hope you’ll join us on this relaxing and enjoyable journey across Puget Sound to the Olympic Peninsula for the Lavender Festival in Sequim. For more information, visit the Sequim Lavender Festival website http://www.lavenderfestival.com and book with us at Cheryl’s Northwest Tours LLC to get you there on day trip.

A Lake Chelan – Stehekin Tour was just completed, and it was great! We left Seattle at 9:00am and crossed Snoqualmie and Blewett Passes on our way to a wine tasting at Wine Girls Winery. Great wines. I personally enjoyed the smokey taste of the grapes in the My Derby Wife red, compliments of the 3 fires in 2012 in the area.

After wine tasting we arrived at Campbell’s Resort and commenced swimming in the pool and lake. The pool was warm, the lake was cold! Dinner at Campbell’s was very good, then we took a walk through town and across the bridge before heading over to the hot tub.

Our Lake Chelan – Stehekin Tour continued in the morning we made our way to the Lady of the Lake for our 4 hour boat ride to Stehekin. My it’s beautiful and rugged out there. Stehekin staff welcomed us with open arms and great food, then we took the bus to Highbridge and Rainbow Falls. One cannot describe Rainbow Falls, other than amazing, and wet! It felt like it was raining, and we got drenched, yet 20 feet away we were toasty and warm. We did manage to visit the bakery before they closed, then relaxed on the deck at the restaurant and grocery store before getting ready for dinner.

The meals in Stehekin are really impressive. I’m telling you! Out there, they do a great job of providing a tasty, interesting, varied menu for meat eaters and vegetarians. We appreciated the voucher system with our group of 8.

With time on our own for several hours the next day before the 2:00 boat shoved off, we had plenty of time for kayaking, hiking, and fishing. Even the Visitors Center with the Rangers was interesting.

Next time we’ll probably add another day to this trip so we can relax and take in all the nuances. For this Discovery tour, though, it was perfect. Thank you Campbell’s Resort staff and Stehekin for your help in planning this fun outing.

A new addition to our tours, we’ve added several overnight excursions. May 30-June 1, 2015 try our Lake Chelan Stehekin Tour. In Eastern WA, Lake Chelan is approximately 50 miles (80 km) long and 1486 feet (453 m) deep, in the Northeast North Cascade Mountains. The third deepest lake in the US, this lake is beautifully landscaped with forests and hills. Lake Chelan Stehekin is a wonderful day or overnight retreat. The town of Chelan sits on the South end of the lake, and Stehekin on the North end. Stehekin is only accessible by boat, plane, hiking, or horseback.

You begin the Lake Chelan Stehekin tour with a ride from Seattle over a mountain pass from Seattle to Chelan, about a 4 hour drive. You stop for lunch just past the midway mark. You’ll stay the first night in a wonderful resort hotel with hot tub, pool, great food and accommodations, all on the beach of this lovely lake. In the morning you transfer to the dock and take a boat ride to Stehekin, arriving in time for lunch. We’ve arranged a tour to Rainbow Falls and a talk with a naturalist, and the hotel rooms view the lake from the North. Stehekin is somewhat rustic with little to do if you aren’t in to nature. It’s a great, peaceful getaway.

Sign up to receive new blogs as we post them: Scroll to the bottom of this page and click the box.

For more overnight and day trip suggestions, visit our website www.cherylsnwtours.com or email cheryl@cherylsnwtours.com.

Cheryl’s Northwest Tours LLC grew in 2014, and added additional bi-lingual guides to the team. Now with 9 guides and 6 languages, the bi-lingual guides team is enthusiastic and ready to serve the world with our fun and informative Northwest tours. The languages we currently offer include Spanish, Mandarin, Italian, French, German, and English.

Be sure to contact Cheryl’s Northwest Tours LLC for your tour needs when coming to Seattle, the tours always include local history and heritage, some geology, and a lot of fun facts as you visit the great Northwest and Seattle, with its wonderful sights, sounds, and smells.